Global investment banks in Hong Kong are battling to beef up their FIG teams in the hope of clinching further lucrative deals in the North Asian financial sector.

FIG has become one of the hottest job functions in Hong Kong, says David Koo, director of search firm Lion Rock International.

“Investment banks have been poaching senior specialists from each other as China is still facing a shortage of coverage bankers who have close relationship with the PRC Government and SOEs,” he adds.

The FIG employment merry-go-round continued just last week, with reports that Barclays Capital has poached director-level banker Nina Zhou from Credit Suisse. Bar Cap helped kick start this year’s movement back in February when it appointed Steven Sun, formerly of UBS, as its APAC head of FIG.

Credit Suisse bolstered its own team in June, luring Simon Yuan out of Merrill Lynch to become co-head of Greater China financial institutions. Merrill was also raided earlier this year when Deutsche Bank snared its Asian FIG boss Richard Gibb. And so it goes on…

FIG professionals have been in demand throughout the recent flurry of financial-services rights offers, capital raisings and M&As. And they are now positioning themselves to win roles in the China Agricultural Bank IPO, one of the key forthcoming Asian FIG mandates.

Unsurprisingly, few firms have made redundancies in FIG over the last 12 months, according to Rafael Brana, an associate at Bó Lè Associates. “Those who are currently out of work are perceived as either underperformers or having left for political reasons," he says.

The employment market is tight due to the lack of layoffs and the specialist nature of the profession. “FIG M&A is a highly technical and intellectually vigorous discipline which enables you to transition into covering other industries, or into private equity. But it’s difficult to make the reverse shift - breaking into FIG from other sectors is a challenge,” explains Brana.

In contrast to many other job functions, banks are on the search for staff at all seniority levels. “Because FIG transactions have remained robust through the crisis, execution bankers at analyst/associate/VP-level are also in demand, but recruitment is selective,” he adds.